Popcorn

It may seem silly to include a recipe for this, but not everyone knows how to make popcorn.  This assumes that you are using a fairly large pan.  Do it in two stages in a smaller one – two tbsp, when popped, will completely fill a 1 litre (1 quart) pan.

Olive oil to cover the base of pan
 4 tbsp popping corn 

 Method:

• Put a heavy-based saucepan over a high heat and pour in sufficient olive oil just to cover the base. 
• Drop two or three kernels into the pan and put the lid on. Use a flame tamer if your pan is a bit on the light side.
• When the kernels start to pop, add 4 tbsp corn and cover immediately. The corn should start popping straight away. With a decent quality pan, you should not need to shake it more than once or twice, and that is only to ensure that the kernels don’t get caught in the popped corn. However, if you smell burning, reduce the heat.
• When the corn has finished popping – be patient – immediately empty it into a bowl and season with Annie's seasoned salt. 

 Note: 

• Traditionally, people cook popcorn in a frying pan.  I never had any success with this until I bought my Spanish heavy, cast-alloy frying pan.  I now use this all the time, but for the previous four decades used saucepans, which is why I recommend this method.

Variation:

• Season with Parmesan cheese.

 

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Green olives with fennel

Olives are a good addition to a lunch of bread, cheese and some salad, such as tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce.  They are ahandy standby to have with drinks, but sometimes you want something a little more special than simple supermarket olives.  This is a great way of turning cheap and cheerful green olives into something more like a treat!

2 garlic cloves, sliced

2 tbsp sherry vinegar (See note)

375 g/2½ cups brined, green olives, drained

2 tbsp fennel seeds

1½ cups olive oil

3 fresh bay leaves - use dried if you have no fresh

5 small dried red chillies, sliced

1½ tsp grated lemon zest

 

Method:

• Put the garlic and sherry vinegar in a small bowl and leave to steep for 2 hours, then drain.
• Rinse the olives well, then spread out on a clean tea towel to dry.
• Dry fry the fennel seeds in a small saucepan over a medium heat for 1½ minutes, or until fragrant. Lightly crush them in a pestle and mortar or give them a quick whiz in a blender: don't pulverise them however.
• Put oil, steeped garlic, fennel seeds, bay leaves, chillies and lemon zest in a small pan over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until oil just starts to bubble. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
• Pour some oil mix into a 700 ml jar, add the olives and pour in the rest of the oil. Cover tightly and shake gently to mix.  Ideally, store them for 1 to 2 weeks, shaking occasionally so that they take up the flavours.
  

Notes

• I use white wine vinegar, because sherry vinegar is very expensive!
• A ‘standard’ jar of olives is about 200 g, drained weight.  I usually use this size, in which case I cut the recipe in half.

Chorizo (seitan)

 

 

This makes one sausage, about 170 x 30.    I worked out that it costs no more than a dollar for the vital wheat gluten.    Even if you add another dollar for the rest of the ingredients, this is a very cheap chorizo.    It tastes just like the real thing and the texture is very similar.    You can use dried flaked garlic instead of fresh and I reckon 1/2 tsp = 1 clove of garlic.    This is very hit and miss, however, because the flakes are big and the spoon is small!    I smash them up a little bit and the finished appearance is just fine.  Granules would do, but the chunks of real or flaked garlic look a little bit like the fat that you usually find in chorizo, so add to its verisimilitude. (See notes.)

I can’t recommend this recipe too much, if you like chorizo: it’s dirt cheap, it’s quick, it’s easy and it tastes amazing. It’s also great to have as a tapa when you have friends on board – vegetarian or otherwise.

When you mix this, try to use up every bit of the dough in the sausage so that you leave a really clean bowl. Make sure your tools are clean, too. Gluten and glue have the same root, etymologically, and any dough can be a nightmare to clean up, because it sticks to your cloths and scrubbers. However, using up all the dough eliminates this issue: soaking will get any remaining dough off the bowl, should you miss some.

 Makes one sausage, approx 150x 30

 

3 tbsp chickpea flour

5 cloves garlic (See Note)

2 tsp smoked paprika

1½ tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp cracked black pepper

1/2  tsp salt

1/4 - 1/2 tsp chilli flakes (See Note) 

60ml water

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp tomato purée

1 tbsp soy sauce

½ tbsp red wine vinegar 

1/2 cup vital wheat gluten (60g)

• Peel the garlic then chop it roughly. Chorizo usually has chunks of white fat in it and chunky bits of garlic give a similar appearance.
  
• Add the chickpea flour, garlic, paprika, onion powder, pepper, salt and chilli flakes to a large bowl and mix them together.
• Now add the water, olive oil, tomato purée, soya sauce and vinegar, one at a time, stirring after each addition.
  
• Now add the vital wheat gluten. Begin mixing with a knife or spatula until just combined without overworking the dough.  You will probably need to finish by hand: it's not necessary to kned the dough, just mix everything thoroughly.
  
• Put the trivet in the base of the pressure cooker and add 1/2 cup of water.
• Roughly shape the chorizo into a log that will easily fit in the pressure cooker – about 150 x 50 mm. It doesn’t have to be perfect because the cracks and crevices will disappear during cooking.
• Wrap it in foil or baking parchment, twisting the ends tightly. Place the wrapped chorizo into the pressure cooker, bring up to pressure and cook for 10 minutes. Let the pressure come down gradually.

 

While warm the chorizo stays fairly soft, but it goes harder as it cools, and if left overnight, ends up with a texture very similar to the real thing.  It keeps well wthout refrigeration: up to about a week, as long as it isn't in too moist an environment.

 

 

 

Notes

• If you prefer, you can use dried garlic flakes.  These are really too big, but if you smash them up a bit with a pestle and mortar (or in a blender), after cooking, they end up looking like the fat in a 'real' chorizo.  If you are very patient, you can break them into smaller pieces.  Soak the pieces in a little warm water before using them.  You can also use dried garlic granules, but they are much more even in size and don't look quite as nice.  Use 2 1/2 tsp garlic flakes, or 1 1/4 tsp garlic granules.
• I like my chorizo quite hot, so use 1/2 tsp chilli flakes
  

Annie's Seasoned Salt

Most people enjoy salty food, and sprinkle it generously over their chips, popcorn, fried tomatoes, etc.  Unless you have, or are susceptible to high blood pressure, there's not much to say against this habit, however, adding a few herbs and spices brings salt into an entirely different realm of condiment.  There is also a school of thought that reckons herbs and spices have properties that enhance your gut health (as well as tasting delicious) and can be included in our quest to eat a widely varied diet, which is often no mean feat on a small boat with ditto income.  Anyway, I recommend that instead of buying seasoned salt, you make your own.  It's a lot cheaper, for a start.

This recipe is for a modest amount because some of the ingredients are susceptible to damp and tend to absorb moisture and go hard.

7 tbsp salt 

1 tbsp dried, minced garlic 

1 tbsp ground black pepper 

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsp ground cumin 

1 tbsp oregano 

2 tbsp celery salt or 1 tbsp celery seed 

1 tsp dried chilli flakes or 1/2 tsp cayenne

Note:

• For a finer mix, you can put everything into a spice grinder, if you have one.  In which case, you can use whole peppercorns and cumin seeds, which will make an even better seasoning!  Mix it up in another bowl and then grind a tablespoon or so at a time.

Basic bread

In case you haven't read the Page about Bread, I’d better introduce you to the oddly-called Vital Wheat Gluten (vwg). This works as a bread improver, particularly with wholemeal flour. Apparently the insistence on kneading one’s bread for a long time is to ‛activate’ the gluten, which takes longer in whole flour than in white. If you add 1 tbsp vwg to 1 cup flour, it makes the dough more ‛stretchy’. I have vwg on board for making seitan, which we’ll explore a lot more thoroughly on another page, so have started adding it. It does make a difference, but it is far from necessary. Thus in the following recipes it will be shown as optional.

It’s worth noting, before going any further, that if the ambient temperature is over 25°C (about 80°F), you can use water straight from the tap – or the sea. This helps reduce one possible cause for your bread not rising properly.

Incidentally, flour varies in how much water it will absorb, so you can’t really make any hard and fast rules here. However, I’ve never found that the amount in this recipe is too much. It’s really quite messy and unpleasant to have to add more water to the dough once you’ve started mixing it by hand.

I find the best way of ensuring the water is the correct temperature, when the ambient temperature is below 20°C, is to boil ¾ cup water and mix it with ¾ from the pump

3 cups wholewheat flour 

1 tsp salt 

1 tbsp instant dried yeast 

1½ cups warm water, at no more than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey 

3 tbsp vital wheat gluten

• Put half the flour (and the vwg) into a large bowl. Add the salt (sweetener) and dried yeast and mix. Add the water and mix everything together into a smooth batter.

• Gradually add the rest of the flour, half a cup at a time. Before it’s all incorporated, you’ll have to abandon your mixing tool and get down to it with your hands. After a few minutes, you should have pleasantly yielding dough that isn’t particularly sticky. If it is, or you can’t roll it easily into a ball, add a little more flour.

• Once it comes away cleanly from the side of the bowl, gather it all together in a ball, flatten it out and roll it into a sausage. Put this into a well-greased (or oiled) ‘2 lb’ loaf tin. Flatten it down and leave it to rise until it’s about 25 mm (1 inch) above the sides of the tin.

• The dough is susceptible to cool draughts and I reckon that the best way to protect it’s to put your mixing bowl over the dough, if it’s large enough or put it in the oven. (I used to put it in a large, polythene bag: if you have one, it might be worth saving just for this purpose.) When your loaf has risen above the tin and is nicely domed, light the oven and cook it at a Moderate heat for about 40 minutes.

• Shake the loaf out of the tin and rap the base with your knuckles. It should (as they say in all the best cookery books) sound hollow. Equally to the point, it should be an appetisingly brown colour and smell delicious.

• Put it on a wire rack and try to leave it for at least 20 minutes before slicing it: warm bread doesn’t cut very easily. Usually, however, at least the crust gets cut off not long after it comes out of the oven!

Additional tips: if the bread doesn’t rise it’s usually for one of two reasons. Either the yeast has gone stale or the water was too hot. Made with cold water, bread will eventually rise, but if the water is too hot you will kill the yeast, so err on the side of coolth.

In cold places, put your loaf in a sunny spot or cuddle it up with a hot water bottle. Alternatively, put it in the oven and use a small oil lamp or pilot light to keep it warm.

Use 1½ cups seawater instead of fresh water and salt. This will not make the loaf too salty.

If you have plenty of time, you can get an even better-textured loaf by mixing in two-thirds of the flour and then leaving the batter to rise for about 20 minutes. This is also a good way of ensuring that your yeast is OK, if you have any doubts. (If the batter doesn’t start to rise, add new yeast.)

‛2 lb’ loaf tins vary in size. If your loaf seems a little undersized, use 4 cups flour (4 tbsp vwg) and 2 cups of water. The other ingredients can stay the same.

The Perfect Ovenless Loaf

For years, I tried to create perfect frying pan bread. It had to be easy to make, not too fuel-hungry, with a proper crust and of a shape that can be cut into suitable slices for toast or sandwiches. Finally, after more than a quarter of a century of experimenting, I discovered how to make the perfect, ovenless loaf.

To make this paragon of loaves, you need the following:

• a frying pan  
• a ‘1 lb’ loaf tin 
• a stainless steel bowl that will fit over the loaf tin 
• a trivet

The frying pan has to be heavy or else it will warp, and a simple cast-iron or alloy frying pan is the best for this. If your frying pan has a laminated base, experiment carefully to ensure that ‘dry frying’ won’t damage it.

If you don’t have a deep stainless steel bowl, buy one. You’ll find it endlessly useful – for making the bread dough, if nothing else.

The trivet can be the one that came with your pressure cooker. If you don’t have one, use half a dozen large nuts (as in nuts and bolts!) to keep the loaf tin away from the frying pan.

For the ovenless loaf, you need about two-thirds of the Basic Bread recipe, ie

2 cups wholewheat flour 

½ tsp salt 

1 tsp instant dried yeast 

1 cup lukewarm water, no warmer than 45°C (110°F) 

½ tsp sugar/honey2 tbsp vital wheat gluten

• Make the dough, following the instructions for basic bread, and then put it into a standard, greased, ‘1 lb’ loaf tin. 
• Put the trivet in the frying pan and stand the loaf tin on it. Cover the whole lot with your bowl and let the bread rise.  
• When it’s ready to cook, put the frying pan over a moderate heat and cook for 45 minutes. If you smell burning, reduce the heat, if you can’t smell baking bread, increase it. 
• After the requisite time, turn out the heat and remove the bowl. Leave the loaf to stand for a few minutes and then shake it out of the tin.

That’s all there is to it! And I think you’ll find that it never lets you down, as long as your yeast is fresh and your water isn’t too hot. And of course, the paragon of seagoing loaves, will be made with sea water.

Sadly, I have to add on caveat. My Origo, alcohol cooker doesn’t seem to provide enough heat for this to cook properly.

Therefore I have written a post on the Acceptable Ovenless Loaf for those of us who can't achieve perfection.